"Try to stay calm and look on the bright side, Christina-san. It's better for these traitors to reveal themselves now than to stab you in the back at a critical moment later."
Cid patted Christina on the shoulder, trying to comfort her after seeing the turncoats and keep her from getting so angry that she charged over to fight them.
"You're right. They're nothing more than a bunch of fair-weather cowards who switch sides whenever the wind changes. So what if they've sided with the Thirteen Nightblades? One more or one less makes no difference... Once all the Thirteen Nightblades are dead, I'll settle accounts with every last one of them!"
No, you haven't calmed down at all.
Looking at the flames of rage blazing in Christina's eyes, Cid turned away and complained inwardly.
Whatever. He only needed to make it through tonight. Once tonight was over, he could go back to being an extra. Whatever outrageous things Christina wanted to do after the Thirteen Nightblades were wiped out would have nothing to do with him.
"Christina-sama, Cid, I'm back. It's way too hot out here. Let's drink some water first."
Kanade walked over drenched in sweat, squinting against the glaring sunlight, a bag full of bottled water hanging from her hand.
Christina thought Kanade was unreliable and had originally wanted to leave the center-parted girl at home to watch the house. However, the magnanimous Cid, generous enough to let bygones be bygones, had persuaded Christina to bring Kanade along while they searched for the final member of the Thirteen Nightblades, giving Kanade absolutely no chance to refuse.
For his trouble, he had received a deeply grateful (?) look from Kanade.
Damn it, are all high-ranking nobles insane?
Why would they drag an ordinary person like him, someone who obviously looked like the most background of background characters, into something that was clearly both secret and dangerous?
God only knew how badly he had wanted to refuse when Christina invited him on this mission.
Unfortunately, he couldn't.
Refusing would have undermined the persona he had spent so long establishing. On top of that, Christina had personally come to invite him while looking completely certain that he would agree.
How was he supposed to refuse under those circumstances?
Fortunately, Cid was still one step ahead.
One extra taking part in such a dangerous operation would stand out terribly.
But two extras?
That was nowhere near as conspicuous.
So, for my sake, sacrifice yourself...
No, scratch that.
Atone for your previous traitorous behavior, Kanade. This is your only chance to regain Christina-san's trust.
As for the look Kanade had given him when he suggested bringing her along, there was no need to think about it.
That had obviously been gratitude for the trust he showed her.
After all, not everyone would give a suspected traitor the privilege of participating in such a dangerous mission.
"Thanks, Kanade..."
Christina lowered her binoculars and happily picked up a bottle of mineral water, only to stop the moment she unscrewed the cap.
"What's wrong, Christina-sama?"
Kanade tilted her head cutely in confusion, but Christina merely frowned.
"Where did this water come from?"
"I bought it over there."
Christina followed the direction Kanade pointed.
It was a business owned by one of the Thirteen Nightblades.
Her expression immediately darkened.
"I'm not drinking this. You two can have it."
With that, Christina screwed the cap back on tightly, put the bottle down, picked up her binoculars again, and resumed watching the area.
"..."
"How about it, Cid? Want some?"
Cid and Kanade stared at each other for a moment before Kanade hesitantly made the suggestion.
Do I look like I'm so bored that I want to create trouble for myself? Even having low emotional intelligence doesn't mean being that stupid.
Cid said nothing, but Kanade understood everything from his eyes.
As everyone knew, among Cid, Kanade, and Christina, Christina held the highest status on the surface, while Cid secretly possessed the greatest strength and intelligence.
Kanade, meanwhile, ranked at the bottom both openly and secretly.
That didn't stop her from constantly trying to use her supposedly extraordinary intelligence to overthrow Cid and become the nominal number two.
With Christina, their apparent leader, already saying she wouldn't drink the water, there was no way Cid would drink it either as long as he possessed even a normal amount of social awareness.
Still...
Wasn't Christina taking this a little too far?
Cid glanced at her.
That morning, Christina had declared that she would rather die than accept anything from the Thirteen Nightblades. Cid had assumed she meant food and similar things.
Refusing even water seemed a bit extreme.
"Mm... I went all that way in this scorching heat to bring this back for you two! If neither of you drinks any, how is that supposed to repay my kindness? If Christina-sama won't drink it, then you have to, Cid!"
"You only pick on people weaker than you. If you want some, drink it yourself."
"I don't care. You have to drink it!"
Cid continued bickering with Kanade while thinking things over, only to suddenly pause.
He gave her a suspicious look.
"You... seem awfully eager to make me drink this."
"W-well, of course! I went through all that trouble and walked all that way to buy it. How can you refuse to drink it, Cid?"
Cid narrowed his eyes, still suspicious, then picked up a bottle and twisted off the cap.
Seeing that she had apparently convinced him, Kanade immediately lit up with excitement.
The next second, Cid pointed the open bottle straight at her.
Terror instantly appeared on Kanade's face.
"Aaaah! My eyes! My eyes!"
Clutching her reddened eyes, Kanade rolled around on the ground screaming.
"Damn. Colorless, odorless chili water. I'm impressed you even managed to buy this stuff."
Cid felt absolutely no sympathy for her.
If he hadn't noticed something was wrong, he would have been the one drinking that chili water.
He stared down at Kanade as if she were an insect.
"You incorrigible traitor. Not only are you ungrateful, you even tried to screw me over. Is this how you treat your benefactor?"
"Benefactor my ass! I was this close to avoiding all of this, and you, you twisted, black-hearted bastard, dragged me straight back into the mess! Thanks for nothing, you bastard!"
After rolling around on the ground several times, Kanade lifted her bloodshot eyes and glared furiously at Cid, the person who had dragged her into this enormous pit.
"Short-sighted idiot."
Cid was beginning to despair over Kanade's intelligence.
She was practically on the verge of being purged as a traitor, yet instead of trying to prove her innocence and demonstrate her loyalty, she was still thinking about running away.
How had someone this stupid survived until now?
Granted, if their situations were reversed, Cid would think being left at the mansion instead of getting dragged along by Christina was exactly what a proper extra should want.
But their circumstances weren't the same.
Kanade was the one Christina was nearly ready to purge...
Wait.
Something's wrong.
Cid suddenly stiffened as the realization hit him.
Then he snapped his gaze toward Kanade.
He had painstakingly maintained his persona, carefully doing everything he could to remain a proper extra, yet because Christina had almost no one else she could use, she had dragged him into investigating the Thirteen Nightblades.
Kanade, meanwhile, had repeatedly danced across Christina's minefield, setting off one explosive after another until her trust level had fallen precisely low enough for Christina to consider leaving her behind to guard the house.
Once tonight was over, every member of the Thirteen Nightblades would drop dead, Christina would win without even having to struggle, and all the turncoats who had fled halfway through would be purged afterward.
In Christina's eyes, Kanade was already almost a turncoat herself.
But knowing Christina's personality, being almost worthy of punishment wasn't enough for her to actually punish Kanade afterward.
At worst, Kanade's trust level would simply remain low.
In other words, although this extra named Kanade had repeatedly stepped on landmines, she had been on the winning side from the very beginning, which meant she couldn't lose.
And the decrease in favorability caused by those landmines had actually protected her from dangerous missions, allowing her to become one of the only two surviving extras without taking any risks at all...
If Cid hadn't dragged her into this operation to reduce the attention on himself.
No.
How was that even possible?
Not a single choice she made had been optimal on its own.
Yet somehow, once all those choices were combined, they formed the single best route for an extra to survive without taking any risks whatsoever.
Damn it!
How is that fair?!
For the first time, Cid stared at Kanade with his eyes wide open, carefully examining the short-haired girl in front of him.
His gaze was so intense it seemed as though he wanted to see straight through her skin and inspect her organs.
Even Kanade, who was still writhing around on the ground, began to feel uncomfortable.
Before she could ask what was wrong, Cid looked away.
He still couldn't understand it.
Every choice he made was carefully considered.
Every step was the optimal solution with the highest possible social awareness while still preserving his identity as an extra.
So how had he lost to someone like Kanade?
She was just a short-sighted, stupid...
Would an extra carefully think everything through and always choose the optimal solution?
And if they could do that, would they still be an extra?
Cid looked over at Kanade, who was washing out her eyes with a completely carefree expression, and fell silent.
There really was a difference between pretending to be an extra and being one naturally.
He had suffered because he had a brain.
"Bang!"
"You've got to be kidding me!"
Cid slammed his fist into the wall.
The loud impact immediately drew Kanade and Christina's attention.
"Whoa, Cid, what are you freaking out about? Don't you know we're supposed to be hiding right now?"
Kanade had finished rinsing her eyes and had recovered somewhat. She walked over curiously.
Cid turned and stared at her cute face, then fell silent again.
It was clearly an adorable face.
So why did he take one look at her and immediately think, background character?
"Why...?"
"I have no idea what happened, but Cid, you're jealous of me, aren't you? Did you finally discover my good points?"
Kanade grinned smugly.
Cid might have called her short-sighted, but she didn't think she was stupid at all.
She was super smart.
"All right, Cid, Kanade, enough fooling around. Eliza is moving. Let's follow her."
Christina still wanted to see what ridiculous nonsense the two of them would get up to next, but she noticed Eliza preparing to leave out of the corner of her eye and immediately stopped the two before their argument turned into a fight.
Cid and Kanade stopped tugging at each other, exchanged a glance, then simultaneously turned their heads away in a huff.
Their attention shifted back to Eliza.
Under their surveillance, neither Eliza nor the group of followers around her showed any of the arrogance and domineering attitude they had displayed several days earlier.
Although impatience was plainly visible on Eliza's face, she continued supervising her subordinates as they handed out supplies free of charge to the people trapped inside the sealed capital.
Their stock appeared to be running low, however, so Eliza soon stood and prepared to leave with her people.
"Um... Christina-sama, do we really have to follow Eliza?"
The moment Christina started moving, Kanade's natural instincts as an extra kicked in.
At the last possible moment, she actually started having second thoughts.
Which was perfectly normal.
Simply tailing Eliza could already cause serious problems.
With Christina's status as a count's daughter, no one could openly sentence her to death even if they were caught.
That was a very different story for Kanade and Cid, two lower-ranking nobles.
Even so, Kanade was already in too deep, so asking to back out now was an exceptionally stupid question.
"...Kanade, you just asked almost the same question Cid did."
Christina glanced back at Kanade.
Apparently helpless in the face of her stupidity, she couldn't resist making a comment.
"She's Marquis Despoht's daughter. Out of everyone, she's the person most likely to know where Marquis Despoht is."
Cid desperately wanted to argue that his own question had come from genuine confusion, whereas Kanade's came from a traitor's cowardice.
But after thinking about it, he was shocked to realize that this behavior somehow fit Kanade's character perfectly.
"Oh... Cid, there's something I've wanted to ask for a while now. What's with that look in your eyes? You somehow look both sympathetic and disgusted."
Kanade obediently nodded before turning toward Cid with a blank face and asking him sharply.
"Nothing. I just suddenly realized some things are innate. Every advantage comes with a disadvantage. They're two sides of the same thing."
"Speak normally."
"I pity how stupid you are, and I envy how you're stupid in exactly the right way."
"I'm going to kill you, you bastard!"
Christina glanced back helplessly at the two, who were still trading insults even now, then kept her eyes fixed on Eliza ahead.
The moment she saw Eliza get into a car, Christina hurriedly dragged Cid and Kanade onto a motorcycle parked nearby.
"Where is she going? Is she going to meet her father?"
Christina kept thinking as she followed closely behind.
Eventually, she stopped the motorcycle in front of a warehouse.
"Is Marquis Despoht hiding here?"
Christina stared suspiciously at the car parked outside the entrance, then examined the old, dilapidated warehouse in front of her.
She badly wanted to convince herself that she had finally found the final boss's hideout.
But her rational mind told her otherwise.
A filthy, run-down warehouse like this was the sort of miserable environment a noble such as Marquis Despoht, someone accustomed to every possible luxury, would never tolerate.
"Ugh... my head is spinning... Ugh..."
"Maybe you should consider the simple explanation, Christina-san. She really did just run out of supplies and come here to restock. Also, Christina-san, I have to point out that you weren't just carrying too many people earlier. You were speeding too!"
Cid patted Kanade on the back to settle her stomach and keep her from choking while giving Christina a strange look.
He had never expected a sheltered noble lady like Christina to be able to ride a motorcycle that fast.
Even Kanade, a low-level Magic Swordsman, hadn't been able to handle it.
"Don't worry about it, Cid. We couldn't risk being spotted and alerting Marquis Despoht, so taking detours and cutting through shortcuts was our only option."
Christina waved dismissively.
As far as she was concerned, if vomiting a little was the price Kanade had to pay to dispel the darkness hanging over the Kingdom of Midgar, then it was hardly worth worrying about.
A Magic Swordsman's physical abilities and reflexes could handle it.
"And never believe that Eliza is a good person. The Thirteen Nightblades are the greatest darkness in the entire Kingdom. How could people like them suddenly develop enough kindness to help others for free? There has to be some disgraceful conspiracy behind this!"
Are you First Princess Iris Number Two?
"Stop talking. She's coming out."
Seeing that Cid was about to say something else, Christina immediately cut him off and focused her attention on the warehouse.
Eliza was directing a group of subordinates as they loaded supplies into the vehicle.
Once everything was aboard, she shut the warehouse door and left.
Cid was about to tell Christina not to be so extreme when he saw her crouch low and hurry toward the warehouse.
"Come on. Let's get inside and take a look. I have a feeling we're about to uncover the Thirteen Nightblades' conspiracy."
Cid's lips twitched.
He looked past Christina toward the graceful figure beneath the warehouse, then back at Christina and sighed.